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Claudix Vanesix and AMiXR X Jemma Foster
Claudix Vanesix is a founding member of AMiXR, a multidisciplinary group of artists creating projects related to digital culture, extended realities, artificial intelligence and hacktivism.
JF: Dance Permit subverts the gender bias of traditional patriarchal Peruvian dances, how are digital realities and AI reimagining gender and ancestral identities?
AMiXR: The possibilities that artificial intelligence can give us are many, and for us it is fascinating that sometimes –through the training of neural networks with existing shapes and data– new creatures, universes, and spaces are created that actually correspond or relate to patterns and ideas that we can see, or sense.
In Dance Permit, what we did was to ask AI for a way in which a Peruvian men-only dance can be danced by women: what would their bodies and costumes look like? how would they move? Can we think of these movements from a gender and cultural perspective, transitioning in time?
To reimagine meant not only to give this data to the AI to process, but also to reflect on the resulting patterns, and reshape them in a way that the outcomes can morph from the familiar and known, to the surprising, unseen answers. We believe that this approach shows our agency and responsibility on machine learning tools.
JF: Can you describe your technological process with training GANs with self-portraits and family archives? How did you address the inherent bias within machine learning algorithms?
AMiXR: Still images were created from video recordings in which Claudix, as a performer, danced and posed using the traditional male costume of the Negrasos de Sipsa, a female costume (invented using related traditional clothing and symbols) as well as with their nude body. This data cannot not be found on the internet and didn’t belong to an algorithm (yet), so we opted for a transfer-style GAN instead of other prompt-based GANs. Continuous training with original images, in conjunction with processes such as transpolation and custom “keyframe animation” with this GAN eventually led to a distance from conventional bias as seen in other AI algorithms.
JF: The project also highlights issues around religious syncretism. Robot sermons and chatbot communions are being incorporated into major global faiths. Do you see a space for AI in indigenous systems and how would this be safeguarded from further acts of colonialism?
Claudix: Under the excuse of inclusivity, we might fall into thinking that it is empowering to have datasets trained with indigenous peoples’ faces, beliefs systems or ancestral knowledge.
I personally think it is very dangerous. It’s possible that we are also manipulated into building these datasets that belong to a very intimate part of these groups. Sometimes we cannot assure consent from them to be part of this data, so it is important to ask ourselves: who is training these models with whose images or knowledge?
Identities are very complex, while AI tends to homogenize them, and indigenous cultures are not an exception to this rule. We have to be aware of these colonialist traces and keep discussing them over time.
JF: What has been the response to Dance Permit from your family and community? To what extent is AI seen as having value as a mechanism to assist in the evolution of past and future ideologies, to assist in creating an arena for new generations stepping outside of binary conditioning?
Claudix: At first, it was very complicated to open up a conversation that was not explicitly taboo but was definitely uncomfortable. The higher authority in my family (my grandfather) had passed away and so there was no clear succession power to say whether it was okay for a member of the family to ask for the permission of the community, or to reclaim the right to participate, or (even) to reinvent/reimagine the family’s tradition.
AI is quite an interesting tool for creativity. It can merge themes, aesthetics, knowledge and techniques that are all part of human existence, and arrange them in a way that may not be the most obvious for us. In this sense, it can break the binary of what we believe or portrait as the past and the future. We feel ourselves in this complex (apparent) contradiction, embracing it into what we do as AMiXR.
JF: We witness the fragility of the landscape through the receding glaciers, and this is echoed by the demolition of the church that you filmed in, by the mining authorities. In what way do you see documenting the traditional dance of your family as a time capsule, reimagined and immortalized into the digital ether?
Claudix: It was an unintentionally important archive created in the shooting process. It was only after watching it on the VR headset, that I personally noticed what had been documented. It took me much longer than before to reach the ice (I had to walk many more kilometers into the mountains), and it was a realization of the climate crisis as a tangible event in my own life. I noticed that even though the glaciers were so deteriorated, they were actually in the best shape they would probably ever be in the future.
Accidentally, this recording was one of the first (if not the first) VR recording of this glacier. Since then, I understood this political (and also poetical) way of what 360 video can do as immersive documentation. What happened to the church was very significant for our family: when my aunt Yolanda saw the film, she cried about being able to see the church one more time after it was already demolished.
We believe 360 videos are (and will be) as important as the first photographs of places, allowing us to understand the past, or portray “present/future nostalgia”, which is another recurring theme in AMiXR. Working with VR made us confront the idea that the moment we are living will inevitably become the past, and our present will (rather sooner than later) seem like a different reality.
JF: Phygitality allows for a fluidity between technology and body, in what ways do you hope that digital realms can decolonise and decentralize our physical world?
Claudix: One thing about digitality that we, as a collective, will always be grateful for is that it gives us the opportunity to meet and be part of diverse communities. Being queer children of migrant parents with indigenous ancestry meant having a very complex validation process in our society and in ourselves, especially when observing the already fragmented identities and discourses surrounding us.
Lore: Virtuality gives us “carte blanche” to create new realities and claim our ways of being by using this non-place as a political space, and for the creation of utopian, emergent places. In the same way, our own familiar space (the digital) ends up nourishing, empowering and inspiring our physical world to be able to take action in our localities and communities. We believe the digital and physical feed each other. In this sense, there is currently no decolonization without digitality, just as there is no decolonization without gender perspective, eco-sensitivity and other struggles that characterize our contexts in Abya Yala.
Image: Dance Permit (Denied) by Claudix Vanesix, AMiXR
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Claudix Vanesix and AMiXR X Jemma Foster
Claudix Vanesix is a founding member of AMiXR, a multidisciplinary group of artists creating projects related to digital culture, extended realities, artificial intelligence and hacktivism.
JF: Dance Permit subverts the gender bias of traditional patriarchal Peruvian dances, how are digital realities and AI reimagining gender and ancestral identities?
AMiXR: The possibilities that artificial intelligence can give us are many, and for us it is fascinating that sometimes –through the training of neural networks with existing shapes and data– new creatures, universes, and spaces are created that actually correspond or relate to patterns and ideas that we can see, or sense.
In Dance Permit, what we did was to ask AI for a way in which a Peruvian men-only dance can be danced by women: what would their bodies and costumes look like? how would they move? Can we think of these movements from a gender and cultural perspective, transitioning in time?
To reimagine meant not only to give this data to the AI to process, but also to reflect on the resulting patterns, and reshape them in a way that the outcomes can morph from the familiar and known, to the surprising, unseen answers. We believe that this approach shows our agency and responsibility on machine learning tools.
JF: Can you describe your technological process with training GANs with self-portraits and family archives? How did you address the inherent bias within machine learning algorithms?
AMiXR: Still images were created from video recordings in which Claudix, as a performer, danced and posed using the traditional male costume of the Negrasos de Sipsa, a female costume (invented using related traditional clothing and symbols) as well as with their nude body. This data cannot not be found on the internet and didn’t belong to an algorithm (yet), so we opted for a transfer-style GAN instead of other prompt-based GANs. Continuous training with original images, in conjunction with processes such as transpolation and custom “keyframe animation” with this GAN eventually led to a distance from conventional bias as seen in other AI algorithms.
JF: The project also highlights issues around religious syncretism. Robot sermons and chatbot communions are being incorporated into major global faiths. Do you see a space for AI in indigenous systems and how would this be safeguarded from further acts of colonialism?
Claudix: Under the excuse of inclusivity, we might fall into thinking that it is empowering to have datasets trained with indigenous peoples’ faces, beliefs systems or ancestral knowledge.
I personally think it is very dangerous. It’s possible that we are also manipulated into building these datasets that belong to a very intimate part of these groups. Sometimes we cannot assure consent from them to be part of this data, so it is important to ask ourselves: who is training these models with whose images or knowledge?
Identities are very complex, while AI tends to homogenize them, and indigenous cultures are not an exception to this rule. We have to be aware of these colonialist traces and keep discussing them over time.
JF: What has been the response to Dance Permit from your family and community? To what extent is AI seen as having value as a mechanism to assist in the evolution of past and future ideologies, to assist in creating an arena for new generations stepping outside of binary conditioning?
Claudix: At first, it was very complicated to open up a conversation that was not explicitly taboo but was definitely uncomfortable. The higher authority in my family (my grandfather) had passed away and so there was no clear succession power to say whether it was okay for a member of the family to ask for the permission of the community, or to reclaim the right to participate, or (even) to reinvent/reimagine the family’s tradition.
AI is quite an interesting tool for creativity. It can merge themes, aesthetics, knowledge and techniques that are all part of human existence, and arrange them in a way that may not be the most obvious for us. In this sense, it can break the binary of what we believe or portrait as the past and the future. We feel ourselves in this complex (apparent) contradiction, embracing it into what we do as AMiXR.
JF: We witness the fragility of the landscape through the receding glaciers, and this is echoed by the demolition of the church that you filmed in, by the mining authorities. In what way do you see documenting the traditional dance of your family as a time capsule, reimagined and immortalized into the digital ether?
Claudix: It was an unintentionally important archive created in the shooting process. It was only after watching it on the VR headset, that I personally noticed what had been documented. It took me much longer than before to reach the ice (I had to walk many more kilometers into the mountains), and it was a realization of the climate crisis as a tangible event in my own life. I noticed that even though the glaciers were so deteriorated, they were actually in the best shape they would probably ever be in the future.
Accidentally, this recording was one of the first (if not the first) VR recording of this glacier. Since then, I understood this political (and also poetical) way of what 360 video can do as immersive documentation. What happened to the church was very significant for our family: when my aunt Yolanda saw the film, she cried about being able to see the church one more time after it was already demolished.
We believe 360 videos are (and will be) as important as the first photographs of places, allowing us to understand the past, or portray “present/future nostalgia”, which is another recurring theme in AMiXR. Working with VR made us confront the idea that the moment we are living will inevitably become the past, and our present will (rather sooner than later) seem like a different reality.
JF: Phygitality allows for a fluidity between technology and body, in what ways do you hope that digital realms can decolonise and decentralize our physical world?
Claudix: One thing about digitality that we, as a collective, will always be grateful for is that it gives us the opportunity to meet and be part of diverse communities. Being queer children of migrant parents with indigenous ancestry meant having a very complex validation process in our society and in ourselves, especially when observing the already fragmented identities and discourses surrounding us.
Lore: Virtuality gives us “carte blanche” to create new realities and claim our ways of being by using this non-place as a political space, and for the creation of utopian, emergent places. In the same way, our own familiar space (the digital) ends up nourishing, empowering and inspiring our physical world to be able to take action in our localities and communities. We believe the digital and physical feed each other. In this sense, there is currently no decolonization without digitality, just as there is no decolonization without gender perspective, eco-sensitivity and other struggles that characterize our contexts in Abya Yala.
Image: Dance Permit (Denied) by Claudix Vanesix, AMiXR